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Sole man: the fishy origins of creativity

HUMANITY may owe it all to fish. A neuroscientist has suggested that our
self-awareness, consciousness and creativity are generated by a bundle of
cells buried deep in a primitive part of the brain that first evolved to
help fish escape predators.

Donald Pfaff, professor of neurobiology at Rockefeller University in New York,
has pinpointed the “nucleus gigantocellularis (NGC)”, a cluster of giant
cells lying just above the top of the spinal cord, as the seat of the human
“soul”.

Scientists have long argued about how humans, and other animals, get their
sense of self. Almost all, however, believe that consciousness arises in the
cortex and thalamus, which lie in the upper parts of the brain.

Pfaff said: “The origins of consciousness in the human brain are not at the
thalamus and cortex. The most powerful and essential neurons for
facilitating and maintaining the conscious state are deep in the lower
brainstem,